BRUSSELS—The European Commission has
promised free Wi-Fi in every town, village, and city in the European
Union, in the next four years.

A new grant, with a total budget of €120
million, will allow public authorities to purchase state-of-the art
equipment, for example a local wireless access point. If approved by the
the European Parliament and national ministers the cash could be
available before the end of next year.

The commission has also set a target for all
European households to have access to download speeds of at least
100Mbps by 2025, and has redefined Internet access as a so-called
universal service, while removing obligations for old universal services
such as payphones.

It also envisions fully deploying 5G, the
fifth generation of mobile communication systems, across the European
Union by 2025. Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker made reference
to many of these proposals while also promising to abolish roaming once
and for all in his "State of the European Union" address on Wednesday
morning.

To do all this the commission has proposed a
new law—the European Electronic Communications Code—which merges four
existing telecoms Directives (Framework, Authorisation, Access, and
Universal Service Directive); as well as an updated Regulation on the
Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC); a
Regulation to support local communities in providing free public Wi-Fi
to their citizens; and an Action Plan to deploy 5G in the EU.

The controversial copyright package was also
formally unveiled. Many of the measures, although divisive, were
expected due to a series of leaks. The headline irritant is still the
so-called Google tax—in fact a neighbouring rights provision that would
allow publishers to charge aggregators for publishing snippets of their
stories.

A so called "YouTube rule" requiring
intermediaries that store and provide access works uploaded by users to
"use effective content identification technologies" to prevent
availability of material for which they don’t have copyright is also in
the proposed law.

There are efforts to open up content to
certain users, such as schools, universities, and public interest
researchers. A series of exceptions to the copyright rules would allow
these entities to use material for teaching as well as text and data
mining under specific circumstances. Despite these many other
exceptions, and a consultation on the subject, the so-called Freedom of
Panorama exception—which allows filmmakers and photographers to include
copyrighted public buildings and monuments in their work—was not
included.